HELP FOR THE HELPLESS
A little girl called Rumi doesn't know how old she is. She guesses herself to be about 12. Not long ago, Rumi was taken out of school; she was in class 3. Nevertheless, every evening, Rumi finds herself with a piece of paper and an old fairytale book, happily copying the words onto the paper. When asked why she did so, she answered that she enjoyed writing and looking at the pictures in the book. The fairytale books that Rumi cherishes belong to a household in Mirpur DOHS, Dhaka, where she works as a domestic helper.
The minimum age for children working in Bangladesh is set at 14, whereas Rumi is two years younger; thus it triggered the question -- why was she working? “My parents didn't have the money to support me” was her response.
This rings true for many families living in the villages and slums of our country. Rumi's dirt-poor parents did not have any other alternative than to send their daughter to work at an early age. Like Rumi, Arzeena was also taken out of school, after class 6, for work. She started out working in a field with her parents but soon a middleman arranged for her to be sent into the city.
“I prefer working in the city to villages because after a day's work I get to watch television here and I also get better food,” says Arzeena, who should be around the age of 17. “I have three brothers and one sister, my sister is married. My employers promised my parents that they'll marry me off to a good suitor when they find one.”
Based on a survey conducted by UNICEF it was found that three quarters of all domestic helpers are girls. The parents of these young girls are often in deep levels of poverty that leave them with two options: either marry their young daughters off or send them to work. It is impossible to decide which would be the lesser of the two evils.
Nonetheless, for these kids not getting the education they deserve is the least of their problems. In May 2010, a newspaper reported of a housemaid, only 10 years old, being beaten and then locked in the house for three days; only when she fell into a critical state did the lady of the house feel that the child needed to be taken to a hospital.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Government has tried to abolish child labour through various laws but they haven't been successful. For instance, in spite of the labour act passed in 2006 prohibiting child labour, many cases like the aforementioned kept happening in the years that followed. Due to the lack of reinforcement of these laws, children everyday are forced to drop out of school and put into the four walls of a household which they tend to never get out of.
Since for these children, working is inevitable, eradicating the whole system that employs them won't do them any good.
Initially Payal, a little girl working at a household in Lalmatia, Dhaka, didn't want to say anything. But after coaxing her for a while she finally opened up: “I like to play like my employer's kids do. Sometimes I don't want to work and just want to play and watch cartoons and movies like they do. I'd like to understand what they say in these cartoons!”
It is simple to denounce child labour as wrong altogether or worse, feel that it is not our problem but only the government's. It is our problem, and avoiding responsibility isn't going to fix it.
A prevalent behaviour in young girls like Payal, Rumi and Arzeena seem to be that they are always afraid. They are afraid of what they might say, what might offend their employers and such. These are the kids that are brought into the city to work, are dehumanised and often treated like slaves to the point of losing self-worth.
We can either spend hours debating whether child labour is wrong and the means by which it can be eradicated. Or we can spend the same amount of time making the work environment safer for these kids. The latter would not even be that difficult to accomplish. There are free schools in every city of the country. Letting your domestic help spend 6 hours at school of the 16 hours they work would not cause any drastic change in the household. However, the change in the child would indeed be drastic, and hopefully for the good.
“I really like making paper planes,” says Ramzan, 12, working at a household in Dhanmondi, Dhaka. “I sometimes wish to become a pilot when I grow up.”
Reference:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/23/child-labour-falls-third-168-million
http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/
Child_labour.pdf
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